L.A. Times Guild reaches agreement with management on historic first contract

Members of the Los Angeles Times Guild outside The Times newsroom in El Segundo in May. 
(Photo by Kent Nishimura)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: https://latguild.com/contact

LOS ANGELES — After 15 months at the bargaining table, the union representing nearly 500 journalists at the Los Angeles Times tentatively agreed to the first newsroom contract since the newspaper began publishing in 1881. The contract is pending ratification by Los Angeles Times Guild members. 

The three-year contract will improve the quality of life for the journalists who produce The Times, ensuring significant increases in pay, wage minimums across job categories, diversity provisions and strong protections against outsourcing and subcontracting. 

“This is what we fought for,” said Carolina A. Miranda, co-chair of the L.A. Times Guild. “Part of the reason I unionized to begin with is because the L.A. Times was the only newsroom I’d worked in that didn’t have basic job protections — things like guaranteed severance or just-cause employment, which allows for due process in the event of a dismissal. This contract achieves that and more. Things like the diversity provisions we’ve negotiated will help make the Times newsroom reflective of the city we live in.”

“Our newsroom formed a union more than two years ago to address serious concerns about the direction of our company under prior ownership,” said L.A. Times Guild co-chair Anthony Pesce. “At the time, we never could have imagined the progress we’d be able to make by working together and fighting for each other. We look forward to working with management and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong on building a bright future for the Los Angeles Times.”

The contract will mark a vast improvement for a newsroom where many journalists have gone nearly a decade without a cost-of-living raise. The agreement will provide for an average raise of more than $11,000 per person in the first year. Most members will receive at least a 5% raise on ratification, followed by across-the-board raises of 2.5% in each of the next two years. In addition, the contract establishes pay minimums for all newsroom positions and step raises based on industry experience.

The union not only pushed to improve working conditions at the 138-year-old newspaper but also fought to protect its quality journalism. The contract establishes, among other protections, extensive limits on the company’s ability to subcontract or outsource work to non-newsroom employees and bars management from imposing work or subscription quotas.

The proposed agreement also addresses newsroom diversity. The Guild negotiated a stronger version of the NFL’s Rooney Rule, requiring managers, when possible, to interview at least two candidates who are women or members of traditionally underrepresented groups, including Black, Latino, Asian American, Native and LGBTQ journalists. 

The Guild also worked to secure many other benefits: improved public transit subsidies, protections against increases in healthcare costs, just-cause employment protections, guaranteed severance packages, protections against harassment and retaliation, and the right to pursue personal book projects and retain intellectual property rights to those books.

Times journalists voted to unionize in January 2018 by a landslide vote of 248 to 44, and began bargaining in July of 2018, shortly after the newspaper was sold to Los Angeles billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.

The union belongs to the Media Guild of the West, a new NewsGuild-CWA local being formed in Los Angeles.

Members of the Los Angeles Times Guild bargaining committee are: Anthony Pesce, Co-Chair and graphics and data journalist; Carolina A. Miranda, Co-Chair and culture writer; Kristina Bui, Vice Chair and copy editor; Matt Pearce, Vice Chair and national correspondent; Paul Pringle, Vice Chair and investigative reporter; Jay L. Clendenin, photographer; Hugo Martin, business writer; Alex Wigglesworth, metro reporter.

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